Ms Elloise Rootman finished her work at the Carletonville SPCA on Friday, 8 October. She started working at the organisation in October 2015 but left Carletonville between 2017 and 2019 to work at the Paws animal welfare organisation in Potchefstroom.
Although she now leaves animal welfare for a new career in bookkeeping at Grain Carriers in Randfontein, Rootman is not ruling out the possibility of coming to help at the SPCA over weekends. Her new career will give Rootman more time with her daughter, Ellené.
“I never thought I would enjoy working in animal welfare so much, as I did not originally plan on doing it. The best thing about this kind of work is seeing all the animals you save and some of them getting the happy endings they deserve,” she says.
According to Rootman, people bad-mouthing the SPCA was the most frustrating part of her work. This upset her more than some cases of severe abuse she has seen.
“People who make others negative towards the SPCA have a worse negative impact on animal welfare than individual cases of abuse. You can help the animals but it is very difficult to change people’s mindset. If they don’t want to support the SPCA, many beautiful animals could never be adopted,” she says.
Rootman says some people believe, for instance, that unwanted pets should rather be moved around in foster care than put to sleep after some time. She believes this is also not good for the animals. They just get to love and settle in with one family and their accompanying house rules, only to be taken away and have to adjust from scratch somewhere else.
She says people wanting to work for the SPCA should rather be stubborn than soft-natured. The latter would struggle to deal with the animal abuse problems they have to deal with.
“You never get used to these issues but you learn how to cope,” she says.
Rootman also thanks everyone who helped her during her work and who continue to assist the SPCA. Ms Madelyne Coetzee, who also used to work at the SPCA in the past, is taking over her role as the SPCA inspector.
